Among the most chilling testimony of the Jan 6 Committee hearings, alongside images of violent protesters circling the homes of election officials and insurrectionists shattering windows to enter the U.S. Capitol, were the mild words of Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer to Georgia’s Secretary of State. Testifying Tuesday afternoon, Sterling explained that no matter how many times he insisted to Big Lie enthusiasts that there had been no election fraud, tampering, or conspiracy to steal the 2020 contest for Joe Biden, he could not persuade certain people—including family members and lawyers—that the election had taken place without incident. “I would show them things and the problem you have is you are getting in people’s hearts,” he testified. “I remember this one specific attorney that we know that we showed walking through, this wasn’t true, ‘OK, I get that.’ This wasn’t true, ‘OK, I get that.’ This wasn’t. Five or six things. But at the end, he said, ‘I just know in my heart they cheated.’”
Insofar as these hearings have been masterfully constructed to “get inside people’s hearts,” the fact remains that for millions of Americans, the 2020 presidential election was stolen. And it was stolen because they know in the very marrow of their bones that Biden and Democrats always steal elections. As Heather Cox Richardson pointed out this week, in Otero County, New Mexico, County Commissioner, Couy Griffin—recently sentenced to 14 days in jail for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol—refused a state Supreme Court order to certify his state’s June 7 primary results. Reached by phone Griffin told reporters: “My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it’s not based on any facts, it’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.”
Hearts that know what they want to know will remain impervious to the facts. Until this week, it appeared to me that the committee was simply trying to lay out the plan—to sketch out the scope of the crimes committed—by Trump and his confederates. These orchestrators of the Big Lie knew that the election had been lost, attempted to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into overturning the results on January 6, pressured state election officials in high office to help them, and abused local elections workers to the point of obscene cruelty in order to claim victory in an unwinnable contest. The hearings are unfolding like a CSI episode: Here is the crime, here’s how we solved it.
But halfway through Tuesday’s hearing, it occurred to me that the real story being told here isn’t just a succession of failed Boris and Natasha-grade schemes to steal an election, but something far larger. Yes, this is surely the story of how future elections will be compromised when elections officials at every level flee from office and are replaced by partisans. And yes, this is also the story of Republicans who say they hate what Trump did but also really love Trump. And it is surely the blueprint for setting aside the 2024 election results if Republicans do not prevail. But the real map being drawn by the committee leads to the crime of stochastic terrorism; the willingness of leaders to liberate and incite vigilantes to harass, threaten, and abuse anyone they please, because anything is true so long as they know it in their heart.
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